Ultrasound imaging systems are widely used today in medicine for visualizing and diagnosing a variety of conditions. For example, ultrasound imaging systems can be used to visualize tendons, muscles, joints, vessels, internal organs, and/or other subcutaneous body structures for detecting possible pathology or lesions. Ultrasound imaging systems are also used in obstetrics to visualize an embryo or a fetus in a mother's uterus.
Ultrasound imaging systems typically include a processing station (e.g., a computer) linked to an ultrasound scanner. During scanning, the ultrasound scanner transmits sound waves into a body structure and detects echoes from the body structure. The ultrasound scanner then transmits data representing the detected echoes to the processing station, in which images of the scanned body structure can be formed, manipulated, and displayed.
Ultrasound scanners may, for example, include an array of separate transducer elements linked independently to the processing station by individual communication wires in a cable. As the number of the transducer elements increases (e.g., for improving image resolution), the number of communication wires in the cable also increases. Such large cables, however, are less flexible than smaller cables and are thus more cumbersome to operate. As a result, cables for high resolution devices with a large number of wires may not be flexible enough to allow ready operation of the ultrasound scanner.